Friday, March 21, 2014

Poetry Month is RIGHT around the corner! Are you ready?

Besides April being our (YES, Robyn & I are both April babies!) birthday month, it is also my favorite

month because it is POETRY month. I love teaching, reading, and writing poetry. Unfortunately, it is sometimes hard to teach and hard for kids to understand. When I saw these pictures online, I literally LOL'ed. They are both something one of my students would do, especially if they were struggling with the concept. As you know, figurative language is a huge part of writing. Because of this, it is something I work on throughout the year. This year, my class has really showed a strong ability to incorporate and understand figurative language in everyday discussion and writing. I think my creative and reinforced lessons had a lot to do with it.

Just recently, we just created a St. Patrick's themed hallway bulletin board and incorporated idioms in the poems we wrote! (I will be telling more about this in a later post, but for now, I will show you the picture!) I really like the way it came out and was so proud of my students for showing their understanding of idioms in their poetry.

I've actually had my figurative language bulletin board up all year because I like seeing the students constantly referring to it! It has terms and definitions on the posters.

I really love using task cards in my classroom. It might sound boring, but my students love anything that is competitive and some turn task card time into a competition. Some students quiz each other on them for fun, while other students read through them for fun. I use main different types of task cards in the classroom and in fact, one of our most popular TPT items are our task cards!

You are in luck...normally a set of 50 task cards are over $5.00 in our TPT store, but some friends and I have teamed up with Educents for an amazing bundle of instant downloads to teach about poetry and it will save you A LOT of money!

Wouldn't it be great to have April planned? Look no further, this bundle will supplement the WHOLE month! I have three products included in this bundle and I am sure your students will love them all!

Those awesome task cards I just told you about...don't you worry, they are included!

My Student Poetry Journal is included too! This packet teaches students how to create TEN different types of fun poems. There are examples written by me and self-explanatory student templates. The pages were created in black & white for easy copying and perfect for student coloring. I can't pick a favorite type of poem to read or write, but these are ten of my (and my student's) favorites! In the past we have created journals with the poems and given them as gifts for Mother's Day or I've even shrunk the pages and added them to writing notebooks for students to continuously refer to.

This year, we are going to have the journals ready to give out at conferences in a few weeks! The poems are coming out GREAT and will look even better when the adorable clip art is colored in! The students LOVE working on their poetry journal and even want to come in for working lunches to finish poems!

I've blogged a few times in the past {here & here} about this awesome Author's Craft Nonfiction Animal Poetry Unit and I'm happy to say it is included in the bundle as well! This unit is great because it comes with nonfiction articles, a giant list of charter traits, directions, student worksheets, and even a rubric! I would highly suggest trying this out. If you are still hesitant, go read about how I used it in the classroom, here.

See this awesome poster below? Although I introduced it in December, it stays on the wall for reference too! It is included in the Author's Craft Poetry Project and is a great resource!

For a limited time this amazing bundle is actually just $10.99 from Educents which is about 75% off! It also includes these other great products, so there is sure to be something you love!

And if you have never purchased from Educents before.. they always have a great deal for your first purchase. {Click here} if you are a first time purchaser to take advantage of a special offer just for you!

You can also take peek at some of the other products included in the bundle at any of the links below!

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Thank you for stopping by our blog. We are two Connecticut, small town, fourth grade teachers. We have each taught 4th grade for eight years and are passionate educators. We love this grade level and enjoy working together. We especially love finding and creating useful resources for our students and teacher friends. We love making teacher friends online so feel free to send us an email or leave us a comment.